Ukraine's anti-government demonstrators marched on the residence of President Viktor Yanukovych outside Kiev on Sunday, in a protest that seemed re-energized by a brutal attack on a prominent journalist last week.
Tens of thousands of people also gathered in the capital Kiev on Sunday, many angered by the Christmas day attack on Tetyana Chornovol, a journalist who had written an expose accusing Yanukovych of corruption over the financing of his Mezhygirya residence.
"We plan to come out here until the day the authorities make changes to the constitution and limit the powers of the president," Kiev pensioner Tetyana Kornienko said, AFP reported.
Estimates of the Sunday turnout at the rallies in the capital varied, with news reports citing numbers that ranged from 20,000 to 50,000. The protest appeared smaller than those on many of the previous weekends, but graphic pictures of Chornovol's bloodied and swollen face that have circulated around the country have prompted a new outburst of anger.
Protesters rode bikes, cars and minibuses to Yanukovych's residence 15 kilometers from Kiev, on the banks of the Dnipro river, and carried a coffin in a symbolic display of their hope that his political life is over.
Police guards kept the demonstrators a few hundred meters away from the residence.
The protests, initially sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych's decision last month to scrap a planned European Union deal in favor of closer ties with Russia, have taken on a wider scope of demands for his resignation. Yanukovych had tried to disperse the protests by force, but after harsh criticism from the West now appears set on waiting them out.
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